Forbes® Best Business Mistakes: How Today's Top Business Leaders Turned Missteps into Success

Chapter 19. JASON KILAR

CEO of Hulu LLC

Graduate of Harvard Business School

Almost 10 years in management at Amazon.com

I have seen the future of television, and it is Hulu.

Well, maybe not Hulu precisely, but something a lot like it. There's no question that when you go to Hulu.com, you're getting a glimpse into the future where television and the Internet are brought together.

You can watch thousands of popular (and not so popular) TV shows at the web site—free of charge for a certain period of time. Did you miss Jon Stewart's Daily Show? Want to see what The View had to say the other day? Did you miss Ugly Betty or Desperate Housewives?

Don't TiVo it—Hulu it!

You can also pay a premium for access to a library of previously aired shows and content you might not find anywhere else. And remember, these are professionally produced shows—this isn't YouTube.

At Hulu, you get the feeling that the fading line between television and computer is vanishing completely. As a consumer of entertainment, do you just want to punch a few buttons and make the show appear magically on a screen? This is pretty close.

Here's how CEO Jason Kilar describes his company.

"Hulu is an online premium video service, a way for people to find and enjoy the world's premium content when, where, and how they want to."

Doesn't that sound like an appropriate and proper statement from a Harvard Business School grad with a degree from the University of North Carolina?

It should. Kilar has the right pedigree from an educational ...